Shaman King Manga Cartoon Animated Series

Shaman King was a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiroyuki Takei. Shaman King follows the adventures of Yoh Asakura as he attempts to hone his shaman skills to become the Shaman King in the Shaman tournament.

Shaman King was serialized in the Japanese manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump between 1998 and 2004 and has been collected in thirty-two tankōbon volumes. Since its publication, Shaman King has spawned a substantial media franchise. The manga has been adapted into an animated television series produced by Xebec and co-produced by TV Tokyo. The series has also spawned numerous video games, a trading card game as well as many types of Shaman King-related merchandise. During the Jump Festa 2008, Shueisha announced a kanzenban reprint of the entire series. The series is called Shaman King Kanzen-Ban, or Perfect Edition.

4Kids Entertainment obtained foreign television and home video distribution rights to the Shaman King anime on May 15, 2003. Fox Box began airing Shaman King in the United States on August 30, 2003. Viz Media licensed the manga for English-language publication in the United States and Canada and has released thirty-one volumes as of November 2010 as well as published chapters of Shaman King in its Shonen Jump magazine since March 2003.

The new Shaman King Kang Zeng Bang volumes have been ranked in listings of top manga in Japan, as well as volumes of the series beening ranked in listings of top manga in the U.S. In 2008 it was twenty four on ICv2 Insider's Guide: Top 25 Manga Properties of 2008 based sales for the entire year of 2008.

Anime News Network criticized the first volume for relying too heavily on the spirits, stating "It's Takei's misguided focus on them that places the series on the wrong path in the first place." However as the series processed it gained more positive reviews as Mania.com gave a future volume a B rating. Manga Life praises the manga for its characters, commenting that "You have to care about the characters to want to keep following them through every fight. And so far, Shaman King has a great cast of characters to care about."

Shaman King

Shaman King is both an anime series and a manga series by Hiroyuki Takei. The manga ended prematurely in Japan with 32 volumes in total. The anime concluded its run with a total of 64 episodes and 3 specials.
A shaman is some one who connects this world and the spirit world. In Shaman King, shamans team up with ghosts and spirits to achieve their goals. The greatest dreams of a shaman is to become the Shaman King, who is able to contact the Great Spirit (the spirit that every soul will eventually go back to) in order to be the savior of the world. Various magical and religious terms are spread through out the story but they merge into something explainable by the time the main plot arrives.

The manga starts with Manta Oyamada, a studious middle-school student in Tokyo , attempting a shortcut through the graveyard to get home after a late night of cram school. It is here that Manta meets another boy named Yoh Asakura, who happens to be a shaman, and is frightened to discover that Yoh is surrounded by ghosts – it is at this moment that Manta learns that he can see ghosts. Over the first few chapters, Yoh and Manta become best friends, and, over the next few months, Manta learns about the life of a shaman.

Yoh soon encounters Tao Ren, with whom he battles. Anna Kyoyama, Yoh's fiancée, soon enters the picture and prescribes a brutal training regimen, in order to prepare Yoh for the upcoming Shaman Tournament. The tournament is held once every 500 years and is a battle between competing shaman to choose a winner, who will be known as the Shaman King. This winner will gain the ability to reshape the world as he or she chooses, to make his or her dream come true. Thus begins the plot that will lead Yoh on a journey that will lead him to many friends and adventures.

Through a series of events and also through participation in the Shaman Tournament, Yoh meets and befriends numerous characters and changes their lives through friendship and authentic concern, which seems to be a pervasive theme throughout the series.

n November of 2004, Shaman King was cancelled by Weekly Shonen Jump. Shaman King was let go due to declining popularity in Jump's fan polls (indicated by their willingness to release the final completed manga volume (Vol. 32) if there was a great enough fan response).^[1] This cancellation was untimely given that the series was nearing its end.^[2] Release of the final volume had been suspended indefinitely, but was released in spring of 2006.^[3]

Volume 32 ends with Yoh going to sleep to prepare for the final battle with Hao; the final page is viewed as Manta's dream, which features Hao as a princess with Yoh and his friends on their way to rescue "her". The reason for that is because Anna was speaking to Manta as if Hao was the person in need of rescue. The page contains the words "Owari" ("The End") and next to that, in front of Horohoro's sword, is a mandarin orange, also called "mikan" which is the Japanese word for "incomplete".